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Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet, there is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been evolved. For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on The Armour of Homeric Heroes. He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. Mr.

Their officers roused them, however, as fast as possible; ordered them to take arms; despatched some to recall those who were straggling through the fields in search of plunder; and so violent was their hurry, that many of the horsemen went out without their swords, and but few of them put on their corslets.

Their enormous stature, their bronzed faces, their snow-white dress and gleaming corslets, the stately, solemn tramp of their great horses, their straight broad blades without curve or bend erect at their sides, all made them utterly unlike the ordinary soldiery of present times, and rendered their appearance perfectly harmonious with their surroundings.

Four or five yeomen ran down the steps, calling out to Tibble that their corslets had tarried a long time, and that Sir Thomas Drury had been storming for him to get his tilting armour into order. Tibble followed the man who had undertaken to conduct him through a path that led to the offices of the great house, bidding the boys keep with him, and asking for their uncle Master Harry Randall.

The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the better.

Leaf supposes, they equip the ancient warriors with corslets and greaves and other body armour of bronze such as, in his opinion, the old heroes never knew, such as never were mentioned in the oldest parts or "kernel" of the poems.

Homer, then, describes armour later than that of the Mycenaean prime, when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave suggest that corslets existed.

Each grasps his massive club with added force, The folding mail is rent from either horse; It seemed as if the fearful day of doom Had, clothed in all its withering terrors, come. Their shattered corslets yield defence no more At length they breathe, defiled with dust and gore; Their gasping throats with parching thirst are dry, Gloomy and fierce they roll the lowering eye, And frown defiance.

Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the question. Homer did not live in or describe the Mycenaean prime, with its stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act so inconsistently?

Yet others counted the notches on the swords, blunted with slaughter, or measured with livid fingers the rings of the corslets, slashed or pierced by weapons. The lady's name was Eleanor, and she also was probably a widow; the Duchess's son Hugh was third of that name as Duke of Burgundy. Ivo, Count of Soissons, was the guardian of the Count of Vermandois, incapacitated legally by his plague.